472 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
times it is found stranded at low tide, in the rock pools 
on various parts of the coast. Curiously enough, the 
Eledones obtained are almost always females. The 
relative abundance of the sexes appears to be fifty 
females to one male. This disparity in proportion is also 
noticeable to a greater or less degree in all Cephalopods. 
Possibly the males, besides being fewer in number, 
remain in deeper water, the females alone coming in with 
the warmer weather to spawn, or, again, the males may 
have a different method of concealment. 
HABITS. 
Eledone cannot be called an active animal. When 
kept in a tank, if undisturbed, it passes most of its time 
resting. Its attitude is often, as Text fig. I shows, with 
the arms bent at an acute angle to the body, and adhering 
to the floor of the tank by the suckers on the proximal regions 
of the arms. The visceral dome also rests postero-ventrally 
on the ground, and the eyes are more or less closed. At 
other times it rests with the tentacles folded together so as 
to form an oval dise of attachment by which it clings to 
the wall of the tank, the body hanging downwards in the 
water. 
When disturbed, Eledone seeks to escape by 
swimming rapidly backwards, the motion being obtained 
by ejecting powerful jets of water forward from the 
anterior opening of the funnel. When swimming, the 
arms are stretched out horizontally in a straight line 
with the rest of the body, while the visceral dome points 
forwards. The eight arms lie closely together, and 
looking down on the animal from above, six arms may be 
seen. Of these the outermost pair—II ‘ventral—are 
curved outwardly in the middle region. Thus Hledone 
does not use the web when swimming, but only when 
